Young Children and Narrative Meaning-Making to Promote Arts and Technology

Around the world, many young children under five years of age engage with arts and technology in their home environments. Engagement with arts and technology becomes a form of sense making and communication for the young child. When children enter early childhood educational settings, the same access to digital technology may not be visible. A divide between home environments and school environments may exist, with different cultural norms. Leven and Arafeh (2002) describe this as digital-disconnect between home-school contexts. This chapter will explore the importance of narrative meaning-making to promote arts and technology communication by young children. Narrative interactions allow children's voices to be at the centre of decisions by the educator regarding arts and technology engagement. By allowing children's voices to be heard around their engagement of arts and technology, we can reflect on reducing the gap between home environments and school environments for learning.